


Oh, You Wondrous Creature

by grand_adventure_running



Series: Wondrous Creature 'verse [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Dehydration, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Inspired by Fanart, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani is an Incurable Romantic, M/M, canon adjacent, heat exhaustion, mer!Nicky, super vague geography b/c this is about mermen not accuracy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:20:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27585986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grand_adventure_running/pseuds/grand_adventure_running
Summary: Joe and Andy and Nile will arrive today, this afternoon. Possibly any hour now. It has been—he can’t think right now, but he imagines it has been two, no three, months since he last saw them. A tiny fraction of time, comparatively, but everything feels long in the desert. Much longer. Deserts are very difficult for him.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: Wondrous Creature 'verse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2024096
Comments: 24
Kudos: 312





	Oh, You Wondrous Creature

**Author's Note:**

> I obsessed for about a week solid over this lovely [fanart](https://karanoidandroid.tumblr.com/post/633517878924263424/joe-picks-up-a-stray-creature) by karanoidandroid and finally produced this. Please go show the artist some love! 
> 
> I wrote this in one night. This is the most impulsive thing I've ever done.

Days of relentless thirst makes his mouth tacky, makes his tongue thick and clumsy. He breathes and the dry air around him nicks and cuts the sensitive interior of his nasal passage and the back of his throat. There’s no saliva left in his mouth to pacify the ache. He steps outside and squints his eyes. The afternoon sun dazzles and each time he blinks there are flashes of color in his peripheral vision.

It would be so simple to lose his way in the desert, like this. That is why he has stayed here, in the village, waiting for the others to arrive rather than heading out to meet them. He hasn’t told them, however, how poorly he’s faring.

The stone street beneath his dry, cracked feet is hot and gritty with sand and dust. Still, he keeps walking.

He realizes he has made a mistake—miscalculated somewhere. He is barefoot. His head is uncovered, eyes unprotected. His sleeves are rolled halfway up his arms, the buttons unfastened to his sternum. The weight of his body feels strange. Heavy and slow, but also light and floating. His head. His head is floating.

His lips are so sore. He tries to lick them, moisten them. His tongue makes a sticky sound within his mouth. No relief.

He has been in the desert for so long. It is necessary, he reminds himself. Andy and Copley had planned a long engagement to root out corrupt landownership and free a community from the grasp of decades-long greed and cruelty. Andy and Nile had gone to attack the head months ago while he and Joe roamed hundreds of miles of desert to dispatch all the bands of “private police.” In the weeks following, Nicky helped the villages repair and reclaim their homes and farms and livestock.

This village, the one they are all rendezvousing at, is experiencing a drought. The season has been hard, but this is the only village for miles that is enduring potentially fatal levels of drought. With a couple days of investigation, Nicky learned the water lines which connected the village’s water towers to a spring in the mountains had been tampered with. Water had also been stolen from the towers two weeks ago, in the dead of night. Punishment.

While the lines and towers are now fixed, the spring is low. Has been getting lower. Everyone is rationing.

Nicky doesn’t remember the last time he tasted water. Worrisome.

He keeps walking, feet scuffling over stone and sand.

His throat—no, his neck—hurts. Stings. Feels inflamed. His lungs are too small and tight.

Joe and Andy and Nile will arrive today, this afternoon. Possibly any hour now. It has been—he can’t think right now, but he imagines it has been two, no three, months since he last saw them. A tiny fraction of time, comparatively, but everything feels long in the desert. Much longer. Deserts are very difficult for him.

He will be glad to see them again. Perhaps they can go to the coast after this. Any coast will do. He wants to be smell the salt on the breeze again. Sailing. Yes, he would enjoy sailing with them. If he closes his eyes—he does so, gratefully, and shuts out the blinding sunlight—he can imagine the breeze on his skin and the rocking of the waves. The lift and drop of the boat beneath his feet—

Something hard and solid impacts his side, pushes the breath out of him.

Startled, he opens his eyes and finds he’s fallen against the stony wall of a well. He has wandered his way to the village center, where an old well is sheltered by a couple of thin, desert-tough trees. He pulls himself up and braces his hands against the stone, head hanging between his shoulders. He looks, but the well has long since been dry. It’s no longer functional.

But he remembers, in days long past, leaning over a well and drawing up a bucket, taking it in his hands and upending it over his head just for the joy of feeling the cool water sluice over his hot skin. Adventurous days, days of plenty. Water and sunlight and a smile and a laugh that still sends his spirit flying.

He turns on his heel and steps—or maybe trips, maybe stumbles.

The sun and sky spin above him. His breath rushes from his lungs. Finally, his eyes shut.

* * *

The truck shudders beneath her on the uneven desert road. A dry breeze streams through the open windows and flutters through the tied down tarp covering the back of the vehicle. Andy has taken over driving for most of the trip.

She drives like someone who is more familiar with directing a horse or a camel through the desert, but she insists that vehicles are much easier to manage than camels. Nile, for whom the experience of riding a camel is still a novelty, is tempted to disagree. Camels might be slower and have a funny gait she probably won’t ever get accustomed to, but they seem on the whole more reliable than vehicles which overheat and slide over the sand whenever Andy takes a hard turn like _that_.

Joe, however, doesn’t seem to be all that concerned. Since picking him up yesterday, he’s mostly slept in the back with cap on his head and a pair of sunglasses perched on his nose. Nile hasn’t bothered him much. She imagines the atrocities he’s seen committed against these people were worse than the evidence she and Andy found planning further cruelties. Ransacking. Beatings. The kidnapping and sale of children. Indiscriminate theft of a family’s livelihood and means of survival. Left to starve, left to succumb to devastating injuries, left to wither in the desert unless the village came up with more money.

Nile took a lot of personal satisfaction in delivering the bullets that ended it all.

Copley called in the kind of people who could provide the resources to aid in a humanitarian crisis. Nile wanted to stay and help. Andy agreed with little hesitation. Joe and Nicky hadn’t thought it was even a question.

So, it’s been nearly four months since they were all together. Nile is eager to get her team back together. Eager to move on to the next mission. She’s been immortal for almost a year, now. She’s full of drive and purpose, much to Andy’s amusement. (Collectively, Nile and Joe and Nicky have very carefully avoided any jokes insinuating that Andy had only needed a young person around to feel youthful again.)

The village they drive into appears much more structurally sound than others Nile has seen. No smoking ruins or collapsed roofs. There are livestock in rudimentary pens, perhaps recollected, the fencing perhaps hastily made. There are children walking alongside the street together and standing in doorways, but there is an absence of eagle-eyed parents hovering defensively near them. There is still suffering etched into each face Nile sees, however, and it makes her heart heavy to see so much of it.

As Andy drives the central road through the village, Joe, who woke when Nile announced they were ten minutes out, spies something that makes him call out to Andy to stop. He leaps out of the truck before it comes to a complete stop. He jogs toward a couple of women who are standing over a body on the ground.

Nile and Andy fling off their seatbelts and follow him.

The women shy away as they approach, murmuring something Nile doesn’t quite catch—the local dialect is a little bit beyond her. Joe responds, perhaps thanks, perhaps declining their help, because the women walk away with an air of relief. Joe has dropped to his knees by the time Andy and Nile join him.

He’s pulled Nicky into his lap, cradling his head in the crook of one arm while his other hand checks him over. Pulse, breath, head, torso. “Nicky, Nicolò, can you hear me?”

Nicky’s pale beneath the heated flush in his face and he’s unresponsive while Joe checks him thoroughly but gently for injury. His lips are cracked. A tender red line splits the skin of his bottom lip.

Andy kneels opposite of Joe and touches Nicky’s forehead. “Joe,” she starts.

His hand rests over Nicky’s throat, but Nile doesn’t think she’s searching for a pulse. His head snaps up. “Water,” he commands.

Andy shoots a look at Nile and Nile runs back to the truck for a canteen. It’s mostly full. She uncaps it before she hands it to Joe, who pours it steadily over Nicky’s forehead, over his mouth, letting it pool over his neck and chest.

He whispers old Ligurian words, as if the familiarity of them will call Nicky back, but he switches to English in absentminded asides. “Oh, my love. My poor love. Wake for me.”

Nicky’s chest heaves in a sudden, wheezing breath. His eyes flutter open and he moves quickly in an effort to push himself up, but his strength abandons him before he’s even halfway. Joe catches him, dropping the canteen, and draws Nicky closer with a hand pressed to his cheek.

“Ah, there you are. There you are, Nicky. Catch your breath.”

Nicky lifts a hand and catches the front of Joe’s shirt. “Joe,” he rasps.

“I know,” Joe soothes. “Hold on to me, Nicky.”

Once Nicky wrestles an arm over Joe’s shoulder, Joe gathers him up and lifts him. He carries Nicky toward the truck, toward the back passenger door he’d left open. Andy gets to the truck first, searching the back for more water.

Nile follows closely behind Joe, carrying the empty canteen and studying Nicky carefully. “Heat exhaustion?” she asks.

Her unit had been trained to evaluate and treat heat exhaustion, a critical skill to have when some of the new blood coming in hadn’t grown up in climates like this. They need to get Nicky out of the sun and to someplace a little cooler. Get him to drink water and dab it across his skin. She could find something to fan him with until the water evaporates off.

“Something like that,” Joe says and places Nicky in the back passenger seat. Andy tosses him another canteen, which he swiftly uncaps and holds up to Nicky’s lips. “Nicolò, drink.”

Nicky parts his lips and drinks, slowly, because Joe won’t allow him to tip the canteen farther.

Joe pulls back and studies Nicky intently. “How long?”

Nicky’s brow furrows. He makes a low sound, shakes his head minutely.

Andy rounds the truck and slings herself into the driver’s seat. “Get in. We’ll take him to the village spring.”

They’re scrambling into the vehicle before she finishes speaking. It’s only as she starts driving that Nicky apparently realizes what she’s said.

“No,” he demands.

Andy’s eyes flick up to the rearview mirror. Her stare is flat and unimpressed. She’s fallen back into her team leader mindset and she doesn’t appreciate her downed team member openly denying her aid.

“Nicky,” she starts.

Nile peers behind her seat to watch Nicky struggle upright in Joe’s arms and stare back pleadingly.

“Andy, no,” he repeats. “Not here. Not—this village.”

“It’s the closest body of water, Nicky. We’re in a desert. What would you have me do?”

He shakes his head, sinks back against Joe. “Not this village. Not their spring. Drought. Their water supply was sabotaged. I won’t take from them.”

Andy curses loudly.

Nile darts a look between the three of them. She has a nagging feeling there’s something else going on, but she can’t imagine what. Joe’s expression is deeply unhappy, but there’s no blame as he keeps coaxing Nicky to drink more water. Of course he’d never blame Nicky for his good heart.

A minute passes in silence, Andy steadily driving away from the village, Joe holding the canteen for Nicky, Nile watching Nicky pensively. They’ll need more water. Shade. A place to stop and rest. There’s a strange tension, though, that hovers between Joe and Andy, and a pained sort of frustration that Andy displays in pressing the gas harder.

“What now?” Nile asks.

“We need to find a body of water,” Andy states, glaring out at the desert landscape from behind her sunglasses.

“Andy,” Nicky whispers, tone almost admonishing.

Nile knows from past experience that Nicky isn’t comfortable being the only one who needs extra attention. He doesn’t seem to like the fuss, assuring that he will be fine, no need to trouble yourself, Nile, thank you.

It hasn’t happened often, perhaps once or twice. It reminds her a little of her grandpa, who had worked so hard all his life to take care of his family that he seemed embarrassed to need a little extra help in his old age. With her grandpa, perhaps it had to do a little bit with pride, but mostly Nile remembers him being someone who didn’t know how to let someone offering to ease his burden help him.

Nile thinks Nicky is so accustomed to carrying burdens he sometimes doesn’t know how to put them down, and so he also doesn’t feel comfortable letting anyone look too long as what he’s been silently enduring. He’ll be fine, no need to trouble yourself.

“Nicky,” Andy says, “I love you, but shut the fuck up. If we have to drive all day, we will, but I _am_ getting you to water.”

Nicky sighs, lets his head roll into Joe’s shoulder. “Okay, boss,” he acquiesces. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” Andy says softly, both exasperated and fond.

Nicky lapses into sleep on Joe’s shoulder. Joe trails a hand through Nicky’s hair, presses the back of his hand to his cheek and forehead to feel his temperature. Andy drives. Nile contemplates what to do.

“Maybe Copley could guide us to—”

“No,” Andy interrupts.

“Why? I’m sure he could find something for us—someone who knows the area, get us GPS…”

“Not this time, Nile.”

“But…why?”

A corner of her mouth lifts. “Copley can’t know all our secrets.”

Nile stares at her, that nagging feeling stronger than before. “Why does Nicky having heat exhaustion have to be a secret?”

Instead of answering, Andy’s gaze flicks up to the rearview mirror.

Nile looks behind her to Joe, whose mouth is tilted ruefully to one side. “What?” she asks.

“Should have told you a long time ago,” he says quietly, out of deference for his sleeping partner. He reaches carefully across Nicky and pulls back the collar of his shirt.

Nile turns around on her knees and leans between the seats to peer closer. Nicky’s neck is… _cut_ in three curving lines. But there isn’t any blood. “What is…?”

Joe picks up the canteen and drizzles a little water over Nicky’s neck. Nicky takes a deeper breath reflexively and the skin on his neck _flares_ , three small flaps of skin stretching and fluttering as water runs over them. He stirs a little, but Joe shushes him and glides a gentle hand down his neck, seeming to coax Nicky’s gills—that’s what they are, _gills_ —into relaxing with just a touch. Lying flat to his neck, now, they aren’t so obvious. She’s never noticed them before, so she assumes they must not always be visible.

“Dehydration puts a lot of stress on Nicky’s body,” Joe says. “In response, his other traits start revealing themselves. Normally, you can’t see or feel them. That’s how I know he’s in bad shape.”

“He needs a body of water to submerge in,” Andy adds, hands steady on the wheel, eyes straight ahead. “That’s the best way for him to recover.”

“His…other traits,” Nile echoes.

“Nicky is…” Joe squints thoughtfully. “He calls himself _tritone._ ”

“Triton?” Nile guesses, puzzled.

“Newt,” Andy provides.

Joe tips his head and says reluctantly, “Merman.”

Nile feels herself staring, lips parted speechlessly. “A merman.”

Joe’s expression scrunches. “Essentially, though it’s not exactly what you’re thinking.”

“Pop culture, you mean.”

“Right. Nicky isn’t water-bound, nor he is land-bound. He’s, I suppose you could say, amphibious.”

“Newt,” Andy repeats.

“Okay, so, Urchin he is not. _Tritone_ , not merman.”

Joe relaxes. “Yes, exactly.”

Nile considers this. “He still has a tail, though, right?”

“He does.”

“Cool.” Nile sits back down and thinks for another minute. “So…anyone else here have ‘other traits?’”

Joe says, “Andy might have been an actual god at one point. We’re not entirely sure.”

Andy says, “Quynh is a dragon.”

Nile does her best to internalize this. “Okay,” she sighs. “Sure.”

* * *

Nicky wakes once more when Joe lifts him out of the vehicle. His head lolls against Joe’s shoulder and he mumbles Joe’s name. He still feels warm. He hasn’t sweated at all since they found him, despite drinking all the water they had. Too drained of fluids to expend them on cooling his body. Not good.

“Here, my love,” Joe tells him. “We’ve arrived, Nicky. Hold on to me.”

He feels Nicky struggle to become more alert, his arm hanging clumsily over Joe’s shoulder, his head turning this way and that, trying to figure out where they are now. It’s approaching dusk, now. Joe starts walking, following Andy and Nile up the thin, sheep-trodden mountainside trail. As far as they could tell, the spring is only visited by the nearby farmer’s livestock. They were lucky to have chanced upon someone willing to share a precious resource with strangers.

“Andy drove us a long way. We’re in the mountains, now, eastward of where we were. There’s a spring here. It’s small, but its pool is deep. I’ll carry you in, Nicky, just as I have before. It’s been a long time since this last happened, hasn’t it?”

Nicky hums, a noncommittal sound.

“Yes, I prefer you to be well, too, but this is all right. I don’t mind caring for you when you need it. Of course not. What kind of man would I be if I didn’t gladly care for my beloved when he needed me? Just a little farther, now, Nicky.”

Nicky sighs against Joe’s throat and Joe can read the relief in it.

Joe crests a small knoll in the mountainside and passes through increasingly denser plant life. Grasses spring up taller, small bushes grow fuller, more trees gather together with greener leaves on their branches. At the heart of this pocket of greenery, trickling out of the rock itself, is the spring. A natural dip in the ground has created a deep pool over time. The water is clear as crystal and aqua blue at its center.

“Nicky,” he coaxes, “look.”

Nicky picks up his head and Joe feels him tremble a bit when he sees the water. “Oh,” he whispers.

Before they move, Nile ducks in quickly to unlace his boots and helps him step out of them and his socks. She picks them up and retreats to stand beside Andy at a respectful distance.

Carefully, Joe wades into the water, which quickly rises to his calves, then his thighs. He stops to let Nicky dangle one foot into the water, to test its temperature. As much as Nicky needs it, it’s important to reintroduce him to the water slowly. Being dehydrated so long, it would be easy to shock his system.

Joe walks in to his hips, letting both of Nicky’s feet submerge. His breathing quickens against Joe’s shoulder. Eagerness, not distress, so Joe lowers his arms and places Nicky gently into the water. He floats limply within the support of Joe’s arms, but his eyes are peacefully closed. Air bubbles up in the water around his neck as his gills begin filtering his oxygen.

At last, Nicky relaxes and the strain of being so far from water eases from his face. At last, Joe’s heart softens from its clenched-fist worry. Even though death is not a permanent state for them, even though Nicky would have revived had he eventually succumbed, to see suffering in your loved one is not—will never be—an easy burden to bear.

Joe leans over Nicky and brushes a kiss against his forehead.

Nicky’s eyes peek open.

Joe smiles at him—he can’t not smile at Nicky—and warmth blooms in his heart when Nicky returns it. “Hold on to me, _hayati_ , one more time.”

Nicky stretches his arms up and links his fingers behind Joe’s neck. Joe skims his hands down Nicky’s sides and finds the button of his pants. He removes them and Nicky’s underwear and pushes the clothing behind him. He’ll retrieve them later. He walks deeper into the water until it’s up to his chest, until he can float on the tips of his toes.

Nicky keeps his arms around Joe’s shoulders, leaning into him, resting his forehead against Joe’s. Joe keeps his hands supportive against Nicky’s back, watching Nicky’s meditative expression, and waits. He feels it in Nicky’s back, the shift of his muscles, tensing and then suddenly relaxing.

Nicky sighs in utter relief.

Joe kisses him, which Nicky returns unhurried. Once they’ve both gotten the reassurance they need, Nicky leans away and looks over Joe’s shoulder.

“You explained to Nile?” he murmurs.

“I did. She understands.”

The corner of his mouth ticks upward. He lifts a hand out of the water and calls, “Hello, Nile!”

Cheerfully, she answers, “Hi, Nicky!”

For full effect, Nicky flicks his tail fin out of the water, splashing Joe directly in the face. Nile whoops. Recoiling with a shout and a laugh, Joe wipes his face with one hand. Nicky twists effortlessly out of his arms and slides through the water, diving with a kick of his tail which whips through the air as he tucks his body and descends.

Joe watches his progress through the clear water. Nicky divests himself of his shirt, shrugging out of it and leaving it to sink to the bottom. He’ll have to get that one himself, Joe thinks. Speaking of which, he snags Nicky’s bottoms out of the water and wades back to set them on the bank. He stays in the shallower water, resting against the side of the pool, and watches Nicky stretch muscles he hasn’t used in a long time, propelling himself quickly through the water with minimal effort. The silvery-blue scales of his tail catch the light, as shining and as fluid as quicksilver as he swims.

They need to go back to the coast, after this. Now that Nile knows and now that Nicky has gotten a taste of the water again, there’s no need to deprive him of such freedom and joy as this.

“He’s amazing,” Nile says softly. She’s come to sit on the bank near him, watching with fascination.

Joe chuckles. “You haven’t seen him in the ocean. This is nothing, Nile. When Nicky is home in the ocean, there is nothing more breathtaking. Nothing faster, more graceful, or more beautiful.”

Nile smiles gently.

Just then, Nicky jets up from the bottom of the pool—which couldn’t be more than twenty feet—and propels himself through the air, leaping as high as he can just for the challenge of it. He lands with a splash, not aiming for graceful but for throwing water as far as he can. Joe, already soaked, endures it with a fond shake of his head. Nile squeaks in surprise and laughs.

Nicky swims over to them and surfaces, lifting his head out of the water. There’s a mischievous light in his eyes and a quirk to his mouth and Joe loves him to the furthest depths of the ocean.

Calling for war, Nile reaches into the water and splashes him back.

Nick’s eyes widen with glee and he retaliates, to no one’s surprise, with his tail. Nile is very quickly just as drenched as Joe. She shouts and pulls off her boots hastily, goes splashing into the water after him. Whenever he dares to lift his head above the surface, Nile is ready. Below the water, however, Nicky tugs lightly at her ankles and darts away before she can make contact.

Joe and Andy watch them wage a vicious water battle, splashing and thrashing like two children in an oversized bathtub. Nicky throws his head back and laughs at Nile’s insults and complaints of cheating.

“You better go in and even up the score,” Andy says, amused, but pointedly staying away from the waterline.

“That’s fighting dirty, boss,” he teases.

“What, you think you could catch him? He’s as wriggly as an eel.”

Joe shrugs. He stands up and removes his sodden shirt. It lands with a heavy plop on the grass. “I am an expert free diver, if you remember. I can hold my breath for a _very_ long time. Part and parcel with having a _tritone_ beloved.”

Andy smirks, shakes her head a little. “Go catch our newt so we can all dry off and head home.”

Joe takes a deep breath and dives in. He swims beneath Nile and Nicky’s splash fight and manages to tickle his fingers along Nicky’s tail fin. The way Nicky ducks his head beneath the surface like a confused water fowl is almost enough to make Joe laugh and lose precious air, but he manages to resist. Nicky swims away from Nile, who, having lost her adversary, claims victory by default. Joe pays little attention to her retreat toward the bank because his focus is entirely on Nicky, drifting down to him like a merciful rescuer of the deep.

Nicky wraps his arms around Joe and kisses him. It’s a skill they have carefully crafted over the many, many years. Oxygen bubbles away from their mouths, but Joe is far from concerned. He can kiss Nicky for up to an entire minute before he should stop and return to the surface, so he makes the most of each weightless second. He presses into each kiss his adoration and his wonder and his never-ending gratitude for having Nicky in his long, long life.

This man who warms his heart with his kindness and his precious laughter. This man who endures so steadfastly the horrors of the world and suffers in the place of others so that they might have a little more water. This man who fills him with awe that any such person could be created so exquisitely that he might fall to his knees with worshipful praises.

_Nicky, oh my love, all that I am belongs with you._

Finally, as his lungs being to ache, too full of love and too starved of oxygen, Nicky gathers him close and together they swim to the surface.


End file.
